To Kill or Not to Kill ...

[BWFoster78]

I wanted to ratchet up the stakes, so I decided to kill off a fairly major character. One of my developmental editors said this:

Killing your characters always needs proper timing. It’s too early or too late to kill Amber Starr. We have no strong emotional attachment to this character. Her death doesn’t cause strong emotions and it doesn’t impress the readers. Just put her in coma, it’s the best what could be done.

This comes a little over a third of the way through the book. Other characters who are named but not seen "on screen" will be killed off later.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

Brian

 

[Russ]

I wanted to ratchet up the stakes, so I decided to kill off a fairly major character. One of my developmental editors said this:



This comes a little over a third of the way through the book. Other characters who are named but not seen "on screen" will be killed off later.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

Brian

Without reading the book it is hard to say. However I will say that I think comas are a poor device most of the time.

 

[Miskatonic]

I guess I could start off by asking whether or not you agree with this statement.

It seems like the editor doesn't think the character is major enough to warrant killing off.

 

[Ban]

I think the best way to find out is to have someone read your story. If they cared enough about the character to state the emotional impact the death scene had on them, then the timing is correct.

 

[BWFoster78]

I guess I could start off by asking whether or not you agree with this statement.

It seems like the editor doesn't think the character is major enough to warrant killing off.

It's a third of the way through the book, and the character has only appeared in about a quarter of the scenes thus far, and only one as the primary focus other than the protagonist.

I don't think that there's going to be a major emotional impact to killing her. The point was to raise the stakes and show that people can die.

 

[BWFoster78]

I guess I could start off by asking whether or not you agree with this statement.

It seems like the editor doesn't think the character is major enough to warrant killing off.

It's a third of the way through the book, and the character has only appeared in about a quarter of the scenes thus far, and only one as the primary focus other than the protagonist.

I don't think that there's going to be a major emotional impact to killing her. The point was to raise the stakes and show that people can die.

 

[Miskatonic]

It's a third of the way through the book, and the character has only appeared in about a quarter of the scenes thus far, and only one as the primary focus other than the protagonist.

I don't think that there's going to be a major emotional impact to killing her. The point was to raise the stakes and show that people can die.

Makes sense. Their response seems to be more general guideline advice, at least from what was written.

Maybe the death can be memorable in how spectacular it is, or something like that. Not only does the person die but the method by which they die reveals something else about another character that increases the danger for other characters.

You see people dying in a lot of scenarios simply to show how powerful the person was that killed them.

 

[FifthView]

It's a third of the way through the book, and the character has only appeared in about a quarter of the scenes thus far, and only one as the primary focus other than the protagonist.

I don't think that there's going to be a major emotional impact to killing her. The point was to raise the stakes and show that people can die.

So functionally she's a redshirt?

 

[Steerpike]

I don't think that's a problem, personally, though I prefer it when the death means something. It could be written in a way that has emotional impact to the reader, in terms of her sacrifice, even if there hasn't been much emotional connection thus far.

 

[BWFoster78]

So functionally she's a redshirt?

Pretty much.

 

[BWFoster78]

I don't think that's a problem, personally, though I prefer it when the death means something. It could be written in a way that has emotional impact to the reader, in terms of her sacrifice, even if there hasn't been much emotional connection thus far.

Given the scene in question, I'm not sure how to do that.

I'm starting to lean toward having her live, but be out of the action for the rest of the book.

 

[FifthView]

The problem with a redshirt character is that the death is used to show the dangerousness of a situation but if the character is a cardboard cutout or stock character, the danger is minimized or at least doesn't feel personal or particularly significant.

It's about stakes. If your main protagonist had a stake in that character's continuing presence, then the death would be more meaningful and the danger seem more real.

 

[Ban]

As long as this is consistent with the rest of the book, you should go for it. Killing off a major character like this can work really well to set a nihilistic theme in your book.

 

[Heliotrope]

Ok, this is going to be long and I apologize in advance.

First I'm going to start with a quote:

"As your characters walk onto the stage in the First Act, they should bring the stakes right along with them. What they care about - and the antagonistic forces that threaten what they care about - must be shown (or, at the very least, hinted at) in order to properly foreshadow the deepening conflicts.

Later in the story, you're going to have to think about the worst possible thing that could happen to your character - and then make it worse. Whatever that "worst" thing ends up being, you need to set it up in the First Act. If your character's daughter is going to be kidnapped, the First Act is the place to show readers how much she means to him. You can't up the stakes later on without something first being at stake." (K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel Workbook)

"ENTERTAINMENT IS ABOUT EMOTION. As writers of stories, our mission is not so much to engage people's minds by presenting them with things which are interesting. Our primary job is to stimulate them to feel something - and that's what they pay us to do. At the end of the day, we all want to be uplifted into states of greater joy, greater passion, and greater aliveness. We want to feel part of something we care about, relate to and feel connected with, and through that, to experience big emotions that will provide a release and escape.

Along the way, if we are intellectually engaged and informed, that's great - but it's a side benefit. It's not the main event. I learned this writing for the HBO miniseries FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON - a project that originated with Tom Hanks' personal fascination with both the big achievement and the specific details of the American space program. It came on the heels of the successful movie APOLLO 13, which took the most viscerally emotionally compelling story within that program, and turned it into a wildly entertaining movie.

But the other missions didn't have those kind of big, obvious emotional elements. The underlying life-and-death stakes they contained usually didn't amount to real tension that could sustain a story. They did, however, have unique details and problems differentiating them from each other, and that's where we started in turning them into one-hour scripts. But because things didn't tend to "go wrong" in the kind of coherent and compelling fashion like they did on Apollo 13, it was sometimes a struggle to find a way to make an audience FEEL something. I didn't initially understand the importance of this, and set about trying to communicate the most interesting details of these missions, only to be pushed by the producer who mentored me through the project to look for and mine the emotional content, as my first priority.

What was driven home for me was that we all look to movies, television, books and other art forms primarily to have an emotional experience - to be transported through story into feeling something powerful. We may want to be interested and informed as well, but what really drives and motivates us is about emotion. When you can deliver a compelling emotional experience that lifts people out of normal life in some way, yet feels real, then you're really onto something that can both advance your career, and be of real value to readers and audiences. " Erik Bork's 10 Key Principles Successful Writers Understand.

Ok. So with that said, obviously I agree with your editor. And here are my reasons why.

- Killing off a 'mostly' unknown character does not raise the stakes. Yes, it makes the bad guy look 'bad' but even then it is marginal at best. Think about it. There are murderers in the news all the time. I do not feel compelled to search them out and exact revenge. Why? Because I don't know the people who are being murdered. I have no emotional attachment to them. Sure the guy is 'bad' as in 'media bad'… but do I have a strong visceral reaction to him? No. Now, on the other side, if a murderer were to hurt my child, my sister, my husband, or even a co-worker, then it is personal. Then I care. Then I'm more likely to want to hurt them back. So point #1 In order for a death to raise the stakes it MUST be personal to the MC.

Example: MI3. At the beginning of MI3 Ethan Hunt learns that another agent has been captured. We have not seen this agent before. We don't know who she is or have any personal connection to her. The writers of the movie knew that in order for us to care, Hunt had to care. So they make sure to make it personal for him. He was her trainer, but not only that, she was the best agent he had ever trained. He had a personal relationship with her that went beyond any other agent he had trained. She was special. It is only because of the personal relationship that the stakes are raised. That he is forced to care and act.

- Killing has a sort of finality to it. The person is dead, so what is the point? However, if they are captured, or kidnapped, then there is hope. There is still a reason to act beyond just 'revenge'. That raises the stakes. How are they going to get them back? Give it a timeline… again, like in MI3, Ethan has 48 hours to find the Rabbit's foot before his fiancé is murdered. If they had simply murdered the fiancé to begin with then Ethan would not have been motivated to do anything at all. It would have had the opposite effect. The stakes would have been over.

- Using MI3 again… killing off a mostly unknown could have the opposite effect of what you want to achieve. MI3 again… Ethan is captured. They have Julie (his fiancé) tied up and gagged. He has to the count of 10 to tell the bad guy where the Rabbit's foot is. Ethan tries begging, pleading, helping, swearing, threatening, everything. Finally they shoot Julie… only for Ethan to find out that it wasn't Julie at all. It was a mostly unknown character wearing a mask. What does the audience feel? Relief. Are they going "Oh, what a bad guy that bad guy is! I hope Ethan destroys him!" ? A little bit, perhaps, but they are mostly feeling relief. There is zero emotional response for the dead girl because we barely knew her. If anything, her death raises the stakes in the fact that now we know that Julie is still alive, and so again, Ethan is motivated to escape to try to find her. If she had been really killed, would he have been motivated to escape? So you have to be very careful about who you are killing, and why, and what response you are getting from your reader.

- If you are arbitrarily killing off small characters to up the stakes then you don't have enough inherent conflict in the story. Mine the inherent conflict. Use it. Make it bigger, more important.

I'm going to use this quote again, from an earlier post:

"Young authors are often encouraged to begin with action. The theory is that if you throw an obvious protagonist into a harrowing situation, the reader will love him just because he’s in trouble. Not so. Someone in trouble may elicit a sympathetic response from me on a surface level. But to make me really concerned about what happens to this person, I first have to care about him.

Let’s say we pick up a story that begins in the middle of a fistfight. Probably we will be at least marginally interested in what the fight is about. But we aren’t going to particularly care who wins the fight unless we care about one of the contestants. Beginning the story with a fistfight is definitely a good idea (as opposed to, say, opening with the protagonist warming up before the fight), but unless you throw in a reason to make the reader care, you’re probably sunk." Weiland.

This was the one criticism I had about the first chapter of your book, when you posted it in the Showcase. You got to "Hailey might die!" but we, as the reader, had no emotional connection yet to Hailey. The response, instead of "oh crap!" is mostly "So what?" Why should we care? We haven't yet seen why Hailey matters. Why she is important to the MC. Why he is risking his life to save her. So the entire scene falls flat.

MI6 again: The opening scene is a dangerous one, yes, but we see the sadness in Ethan and Julia's eyes. The fear. Ethan speaks calm word to her. Promises her it is going to be Ok. We are shown their love and their compassion. In the next scene we are brought to their engagement party. We see the small talk and the kissing and the sneaking little romantic moments together. We learn that Ethan gave up being an agent to be a trainer so that he could settle down. He gave up his life for her. The writers built up the relationship FIRST so that they could raise the stakes later.

Again, if you are going to raise the stakes then something must first be at stake. Killing off a mostly unknown does not raise the stakes.

 

[Penpilot]

There are many ways to raise the stakes. Part of it depends on the type of story you're telling. From my observations, two things get thrown out as raising the stakes quite often, sometimes too often and for the wrong reasons. The first is the fate of the world is suddenly at stake, and the second is killing off of a character.

Neither is a bad choice on its own, but IMHO these are things that should be thought out and set up long in advance, so they have impact, and as Helio said, personal and emotional impact to your MCs.

There are many different ways outside of a death that can raise the stakes. They don't always have to be literally earth shattering and deadly. They just have to feel that way to your MCs. Their world's can figuratively shatter and death can be a figurative death.

An Olympic sprinter spraining their ankle the night before their event can be emotionally earth shattering because it's the death of a dream and a death of years of hard work.

A child getting laryngitis and losing their voice before the big recital can be earth shattering because it's their terminally grandmother's last chance to see them sing.

Your character may be a redshirt, but to the MC, they shouldn't be, and the audience shouldn't see them that way either. Because when I see a redshirt die in Trek, I don't go "Oh my, the stakes are raised." I laugh my ass off because it's so transparent, and I know that the MCs won't die.

With that said, that doesn't mean the MCs can't be emotionally hurt and have their souls figuratively beaten to within an inch of their existence. That option is something the audience can't guard against by knowing that the MC can't die.

 

[Miskatonic]

The scene in Aliens where the xenomorph bursts its way through the chest cavity of the female colonist that is all cocooned up and begging them to kill her, is a great use of a minor character that reveals something extremely important to the plot.

Though we forget about her for the most part in a few minutes, what took place is one of the central plot points for the entire movie.

 

[BWFoster78]

Your character may be a redshirt, but to the MC, they shouldn't be, and the audience shouldn't see them that way either.

I think that my underlying problem is that, with the character only appearing in a few scenes so far, I don't have enough story space for a deep bond to be formed. Though she's represented as my MC's only friend in his new world, that friendship, I think, is too short-lived for a deep, deep impact.

I also worry that the death will make the story darker than I'd like.

Thus, I think the editor is correct in this case; I should have the character be severely hurt and not killed.

Thanks for all the advice!

Brian

 

[Miskatonic]

A person could always lose are severely injure a limb that would make them more of a burden to the MC, but also help to show the MC's level of compassion towards them, especially if they live in a world where something like this could mean the difference between life and death.

 

[Penpilot]

I think that my underlying problem is that, with the character only appearing in a few scenes so far, I don't have enough story space for a deep bond to be formed. Though she's represented as my MC's only friend in his new world, that friendship, I think, is too short-lived for a deep, deep impact.

It's not the qantity of screen time that determines connection. It's the quality of it. If your redshirt shines in the time they have people will connect with them and want more. And will be hit hard when that's taken away. It's like those rock stars passing away at 27.

For example. In Star Wars, Biggs Darklighter. Given this character is only in extended scenes, but I think it serves as a solid example. He only shows up in like three scenes. At the beginning where he says he's going to run off to join the rebellion. In the hanger before the x-wings take off for their trench run. And finally when he dies during that trench run. Probably a minute of screen time. But to me when he dies, I feel something.

To me it's the same as quickly establishing a connection between reader and MC. You just do it with a redshirt. You make them real and the relationship real. Obviously it's not the same a the death of a character that's been on screen much more but it still can work.

 

[BWFoster78]

But to me when he dies, I feel something.

I don't. I barely remember the guy.

It's not the qantity of screen time that determines connection. It's the quality of it.

This sounds good in theory, but in practice, I think screen time is important.